Ingrates on the Hudson

As far as landings go, it will be hard to ever top the unbelievable performance of one Capt. Sullenberger and his extraordinarily well prepared and professional crew. His quick thinking, years of preparation, and calm under intense pressure inarguably played a major role in the saving of 150+ lives. The fact that he successfully ditched an Airbus A320 in the Hudson River after a dual engine loss caused by the ingestion of a number of geese without a single human fatality (presumably the geese were not quite as lucky) prompted the media to refer to the forced landing as "The Miracle on the Hudson." Now, however, we may start hearing about "Ingrates on the Hudson."

Now, I have never survived a terrifying incident such as the event these passengers lived through. I don't know what kind of adjustment period one must go through after such a traumatic experience. That said, I would hope that I would be grateful to the pilot that saved my life, and to the airline that trained him and his crew. In other words, I hope that I would never behave like this:

Some who were on the plane - brought down by a flock of geese after takeoff from La Guardia Airport on Jan. 15 - said the temporary tease of first-class perks is for the birds.

"I think if you survive a plane crash, being upgraded permanently is a good gesture too," said Fred Berretta, 41, of Charlotte, NC, where the Airbus A320 was headed.

Manhattanite Tess Sosa, who escaped the sinking plane with her husband and two small children, thought the airline was too focused on self-congratulations - and "they want to exonerate themselves as much as they can."

"They are happy they had such amazing results, and they applaud themselves, and then give us a small token?" she said. "That's how I take it."

"A small token?" That's how little Mrs. Sosa values her life? You know, with gratitude like that, I think I agree with her valuation. What exactly does Mrs. Sosa think the airline needs to exonerate itself from? Perhaps she would feel better about things if the airline was paying a few hundred thousand to her estate.

Mansfield: the fourth time was no more charmed than the third

Well, to be fair it is hard to blame the Mansfield Curse for this one. The forecast was never all that promising anyway, what with a bone-chilling 15F and high overcast in the offing. Still, it's been awhile, and if Co-pilot Rick was willing to brave the frigid conditions, it would be undignified for the Capt. to be the one to wuss out. We arranged for an 0930 meeting at the 'drome, but it just wasn't to be. The initial Weather-out-the-Window(tm) observation looked promising: high, wispy clouds with a significant percentage of blue showing. One must consult a higher authority, however, when it comes to aviation forecasting and decision making. Off to DUATs to get the official view, once a cup of hot tea could be procured. Sadly, not only had the morning forecast not done anything to improve the below freezing temperatures, but it now also included a warning for "showers in the vicinity," which was a new and unwelcome addition. With the temperature at 15F, one must assume that 'showers' means 'snow' and/or 'ice'. That, and my normal aversion to starting Papa's engine when it's that cold out with only my sump heater to preheat, was enough to cancel for today.

As you can see, that probably wasn't a horrible decision:



If that keeps up, I'll be out plowing the driveway this afternoon - that will be enough of the outdoors for me today. As much as I hate the driveway clearing job, I can console myself with the idea that least it's snow this time. My biggest beef with central Ohio winter weather is that it more often than not isn't snow. Instead of nice puffy snow, we get ice or ice-byproducts like sleet or freezing fog. I don't think I'd hate winter quite as much if we got real snow, the kind of snow you can do things with, things like riding snowmobiles or skiing. But, being as you have to go through winter with the weather you have and the weather that I have is more often than not utterly craptacular, I just stay inside and endure.

Saturday was pretty much the same story weather-wise, albeit with the exception of my having gone out long enough for an excursion to Lowes to pick up some wood and wood-byproducts. I've been struggling with the P-51 project because I've been using a 1/8" piece of chipboard as a work surface. It is so thin and flexible that it doesn't provide an even remotely acceptable work surface. It's slightly better than a very large piece of typing paper, but not by much. The problem with getting something better is that we traded in our Durango for a Subaru Forester a few years ago and I haven't been able to haul a large piece of plywood home without it. I finally decided to just go browse the shelves at Lowes and see if I couldn't cobble something together out of materials that would fit in the Subie.

What I ended up with was three 5/8 x 12 x 72 particle boards. Being manufactured, they're as flat as, well, boards, and plenty strong for what I'm using them for. A bonus trait was their price: cheap. I also picked up a few 2x4x96 to use to strap the three planks together, thereby forming a sturdy 3' x 6' worktop. It only took a few minutes to put it all together, although the job of lifting that heavy SOB up and onto Co-pilot Rick's sawhorses took a little longer:





The kit is at one of those stages that are rife with danger. It's time to bend the balsa top fuselage sheeting around the stringers, which is just the type of operation that inevitably ends in tears. Even thin balsa sheet wetted with warm water seems to maintain a preternatural bitterness (one could describe it as Pelosi-esque), so when I try to bend it, it invariably either cracks or breaks away from the fuselage at the lower glue joint:





It didn't crack this time, although there were most assuredly some dire warnings in the form of cracking sounds emanating from the lower edge of both sheets. The glue will take the rest of the day to dry, so I won't know until later whether or not it will all stick together once I remove the masking tape that's currently holding it all together.

Oh, and those "showers in the vicinity?" Here they are, at just about the time we would have been returning:



I'm awarding myself a "Good Call" ribbon today.

From the Dept. of The Way Things Turn Out For Me

So, it's another indoor day, spent driving a water taxi in San Francisco Bay courtesy of the Ship Simulator 2008 program, and flying hard IFR from Wright-Patterson AFB to Rickenbacker International in a Siai-Marchetti SF-260 courtesy of the Microsoft Flight Simulator. There was also a little gluing work to do on the P-51, and there should be a great, hard-hitting football game on tonight when Pittsburgh attempts to end the dream for the scrappy Baltimore Browns. (Yes, I know.)

I thought it to be perfect conditions for a nice, hearty dinner tonight, so dug out some frozen chicken, and collection of veggies, and the slow cooker. My idea was to cook up a nice crock of Chicken & Dumplings. I don't make dumplings very often (as we'll see), but I do remember that the baking powder has to be relatively fresh or the dumplings will sit there like lumps of library paste. I diligently checked the expiration date on the bottom of the can: Oct 2004. Well, that's right out, isn't it. Useless. To the trash bin with it, post haste.

Co-pilot Egg was conveniently lounging on the sofa, spending her day working through some of the classic movies that she grew up with. There was Aladdin, there was Toy Story, and who knows what else. That level of ostentatious comfort is irresistible to me: she was given the assignment to call a neighbor to ask to borrow some baking powder of a more recent vintage and go pick it up. Unfortunately, I did not monitor the call, a failure that she shamelessly took advantage of by accepting their offer to deliver it right to the front door. Now me, I'm a firm believer that if you want to borrow it, you ought go pick it up yourself. (Shut up, Rick.) Sensing a parental opportunity, I berated her for her insensitivity.

But hey, no biggy: the neighbor has a nice rental while their car is in the shop and professes to have enjoyed the chance to drive it, albeit for only about a quarter mile. Win-win for everyone involved, right? Well, almost. The thing is, when I checked the expiration on the borrowed baking powder I found a date of May, 1990. It's fourteen years older than the stuff I had thrown away. Three years older than their eldest child. Longer than I've been married. In fact, it's old enough to vote.

We're having Chicken & Noodles for dinner.

After which, Ms. Egg will be returning the baking powder.

A little more work on the P-51

I still have no idea what I'm going to do with this thing, but it's still nice to have something to work on. I found a bunch of leftover fiberglass from the kayak that I built last year, so I'm kicking around the idea of glassing the P-51. It's not exactly fun work, but doing it would let me paint the plane using my HVLP spray gun and air compressor. That ought to be fun. I could give the plane to a neighbor that flies RC, but I've never been able to get over the Sunday afternoon when he stood behind me drinking a couple of Killian's while I spend a couple of hours fixing his computer for him without offering at least one brew to me. Funny how that stuff sticks with you, and in his case, will cost him an opportunity for what will hopefully be a nice kit. The lesson here for everyone else is pretty obvious, eh?

The P-51 is a good time killer, but I'd really rather be building another boat. I'd still like a small sailing skiff to go with the kayak. Specifically, I'd like to be building a Jimmy Skiff, a kit sold my the same outfit that I bought the kayak kit from:



It's pretty expensive, though. For now, I'll keep going on the P-51 and see if I can stretch it out until the weather breaks in a few months. The type of work isn't all that different. Today was sanding the wingtips and epoxy gluing a few parts in place:









It's nice to get some use out of my boat building clamps, even if it's not for building a boat:

My annual burning desire to immediately reincarnate as a bear

It's cold this weekend. Real cold. Not Minnesota cold, mind you, so it's not like Ohio is going to elect an angry, failed comedian to the Senate or anything, but still pretty damn cold. It's the kind of cold that makes me wish that I was a bear and could hibernate through the whole thing. It's so cold that I think the electronics in my normally hyper-reliable Subaru have had a thermal lobotomy. The car is running fine, but the digital thermometer is now preceding the temperature reading with a hyphen. Odd, that.

Oddly enough, we've only had a smattering of snow so far this year. We had just enough this week for the airport plows to have built up a small but uncrossable wall of snow/ice in front of my hangar. Not that I'd be flying anyway; anything under about 25F is just too uncomfortable. It was also just enough snow to really bollocks up a couple of my work commutes. The interesting thing about winter driving in Columbus is that it makes the slow folks go slower and the fast folks go faster.

A large percentage of Central Ohio drivers seem to always consider the road conditions to be worse than they actually are, while a smaller (yet statistically significant) percentage insist on driving as if the conditions are far better than they are. The people like me that have an uncanny ability to unerringly gauge the precisely perfect speed for the conditions are stuck in the middle. We have to watch out for the yahoo that didn't clear the snow from his car and is making seemingly random lane changes as he fearlessly blazes a trail through the drifts in the far left lane, slaloming around the overly cautious drivers crawling along with a nearly palpable cloud of fear emanating from their cars, and we also have to watch the we ourselves don't run into the 15 mph rolling roadblock caused by a white-knuckled driver gripping the steering wheel as if it was his Harry Reid's neck.

I'm not a big fan of snow, but I do prefer it over the ice that we have had for the previous two weeks. Snow at least offers the opportunity to do some fun things. Things like teaching your dog how to write his name in the snow during his periodic trips to the great outdoors, for example. It's easier than you might think, actually, and requires very little intelligence on the part of the dog. The trick, you see, is to simply change the dog's name to Yellow Spot. Voila! Now every time he goes out, he writes his name in the snow!

Today is the coldest day of the year so far (which, this being only the 16th day of the year, isn't saying all that much) and for some reason the powers-that-be have decided to close the schools. Now I don't want to get into my I-walked-five-miles-to-school-through-conditions-that-would-be-too-harsh-for-Todd-Palin mode, but really: I don't remember my school ever being closed because it was cold outside. Of course, Global Warming hadn't been invented yet way back then, so perhaps it just never got this cold. Really, I'm just saying. Too cold for school? It's not like they're in an old wooden shed behind the church using the dry corn husks that weren't used in the outhouse to burn in a hub cap to keep warm, after all.

So, after making a short story long, I'm just here to tell you not to bother reading this blog this weekend. I won't be flying.

February calendar

I think I'll try for one airplane picture and one not-an-airplane picture each month:


Photo courtesy of Co-pilot Rick



Click for larger picture, then right click on the picture to select 'Set as Desktop Background' (or similar if you're using Internet Explorer)

Freezing fog or freezing rain?

Who cares. It's a sadistic perversion of the beautiful winter weather you see on Christmas cards. ski lodge brochures, and Hallmark Channel shows either way.



Sooo... the weather outside is frightful, inside it's quite delightful, and so on. It's a stay-in day, in other words. This is not an uncommon occurrence this time of year and as such I tried to lay in supplies during the week to keep myself occupied on days like these, unsuccessfully as it turns out. I was kicking around the idea of building a model plane. Trying to keep the cost down, I immediately ruled out a flying RC plane. The cost of the radio and a mid-size engine alone would be at least $300 and I don't see any reason to head down that path.

At the bottom of the expenditure scale, I thought about a Guillow's balsa model. I built a few of the smaller rubber band powered, balsa and tissue Guillow's planes when I was a kid and I was wondering if 1) they were still in existenc, and 2) if they had anything a little larger than the small planes I had built before. I remember having problems with the small pieces/parts even back when I had decent manual dexterity and near vision - I don't think I could do it at all now. I soon found their website and zeroed in on this:



It has a 24" wingspan, big enough for clumsy fingers, poor eyesight, and a Cox .049 engine if I wanted to modify the kit for control-line flying. I've got a one acre backyard going to waste and I thought a control-line plane would work well back there. Guillow's has plenty of other large kits, but this one has the benefit of being one of the first that they have upgraded to laser cut parts. Diecut parts can be infuriating to work with if they are poorly cut; you don't take that chance with laser cut.

I went to Hobbytown on Friday to see if they had one, but the only Guillow's kits they had were the tiny little kits I had built before. I investigated other alternatives while I was there, the idea of a small electric RC also in mind for the backyard. Everything that they had was ARF (almost-ready-fly) or worse, ready to fly right out of the box. That was true of the piston engine RC planes as well. Apparently no one builds their own anymore. At the risk of sounding like I walked five miles uphill (both ways!) to school every day, back when I was heavily into RC airplanes you had to build your own. Now being as I didn't build my own RV-6 this may sound hypocritical, but what has become of our country? We can't even build our own RC kits anymore? I also found out that you can't get Cox .049 motors anymore. Man, do I feel ancient!

I found the Guillow kit on an internet mail order site for $25, so I might just go ahead and order one. Or... I could really get into this:



Video here.

I built a lot of Great Planes kits back in the day. In fact, they were my manufacturer of choice because of the high quality of their kits. I looked to see how much the radio and motor would be, thinking that maybe it would be cheaper than a gas engine. It was, but not by much. Bummer. Especially since I read through the build manual and it looks like a lot of fun to put together.

So, having failed in my search for a project, I was left with nothing to do but spend some more time straightening up the basement. And lo and behold, what did I find? Tucked back in a corner, behind a huge Miller Genuine Draft bar mirror was an old RC P-51 kit that I had started at least ten years ago. I can't remember why I didn't finish it, but I think it had something to do with gluing a part in the wrong place and not being able to fix it. Or tossing it into a box and hiding it in a dark corner out of sheer disgust. I'm fuzzy on that, but I guess it doesn't matter. I pulled out the plans and build manual (which, surprisingly for me, is clearly marked as to exactly which steps I had completed) and laid out the big parts for inspection.



I think I can go ahead and start working on it with the assumption that it can be made flyable, although I doubt if I will want to buy a new radio or engine for it. If it comes to it, there's always craigs list to look for that kind of stuff cheap. If I find that I had indeed made an unrecoverable mistake, I'll just build it for display and donate it to JP's BBQ over at Bolton.

Or I'll just set it aside over by the abandoned canoe project, or let it sit on the porch swing. It doesn't much matter what I end up doing with it as long as I enjoy spending time working on it, right? To me, that's the whole point!